History 193 Seminar in Africa and Middle East History: African Life Histories Monday, 3:30-6:30, O’Connor 210 Professor LaRay Denzer, 24 O’Connor Hall, [email protected], x4112 Office hours: MWF, 10:30-11:30 This seminar focuses on the life histories of five iconic Africans: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti of Nigeria, regarded by many as the foremost musician of twentieth-century African; Nisa, an ordinary ! Kung woman of Botswana; Kwame Nkrumah, Pan-African revolutionary and first African prime minister of Ghana; Nelson Mandela, revolutionary and first black president of South Africa, and Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate, dramatist, novelist, memoirist, and public intellectual. Each personality represents a major theme in African history, including the role of popular culture in public resistance movements, endangered indigenous cultures and modern development, the struggle for majority rule, and the rise of public intellectuals as critics of national and world policy. Besides exploring the national careers and various contexts (national and global) of the lives of these personalities, the seminar will also examine how auto/biography reconstructs life histories as well as the objectives and methodologies of auto/biographers. Requirements

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